2012 Monaco Grand Prix Thread ***SPOILERS***

I think here is where this thing with different teams winning races ends, but not different drivers. I can see a Hamilton victory here, maybe even Webber! I would've voted for Raikkonen but recently Lotus said its car isn't well suited for the twisty layout. But, who knows? That's the most popular phrase among F1 fans this season



Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps

I'm gonna put my money on Kimi for the win; with a podium for Maldonado.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

Ladbrookes have Webber at 20/1, Nico at 25/1 and Schumacher at 50/1

We suspect the Mercedes will be quick here, so I was going to put £2 on each. IMO of the current grid, Webber is about as close as you can get to a Monaco specialist. He and Kimi seem to be consistently awesome here. Certainly more so than Lewis. I just believe the driving style Lewis has makes him appear so on edge at this place, and IMO that gives the illusion of being a Monaco genius. Instead it says to me that it's only a matter of time before he hits the wall/another driver.

He is quick here, like instantly quick but as far as a whole race is concerned, surely Webber is one of the best here?

I am not sure how I feel about rain, hopefully there is not too much and the race will run without SC delays due to rain. As for qualifying, I will be hoping for a mixed condition session with the hope that we see a kind of mixed up grid.

Pirelli say we'll see a variety of strategies, and we could do... but I can't see the winning strategy being more than 2 stops. They key to Monaco is clear air, and traffic. If you have clear air you can make a multiple stop strategy work well. If you're stuck in traffic all you can do is wait for clear air....

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

oooh man ! i am slowly, NO, actually pretty rapidly, starting to get annoyed with the statements of all the teams and drivers about the forthcoming race in Monte Carlo. Maldonado says "i will win", same goes for ferrari, mclaren and mercedes. All of a sudden ferrari say "the championship is in our hands" WTF ?? they could not even get past a williams last time round and hamiltion was over .6 of a second faster than them. How about the renault, who were behind just because they screwed their strategy as good as screwing sth. up gets. Even the white saubers say "we will be strong in monaco".

Isn't it just possible that the drivers/ teams go out and say: "We have no idea what will happen in monaco". Because this is pretty much the situation at present.


And btw. according not only to schumacher but alos to mark webber the new tyres are full sh&%/§. Pirelli tried to put it in a way that only schumacher does not like the current tyres, but actually schuey said it well... 80-90 % of the grid does not like those compounds. A pure example is the situation in spain, where alonso (with tyres about 4 laps fresher than maldonado's got close in 2 laps, then fought about 3 laps and did not have any tyres left" WTF is that ?!? I know you enjoy the show guys but just think for a second how boring it will be from driver's point of view to nurse the car all the time. i'd assume they barely even sweat during the race nowadays !!

mitadumapaga Wrote:
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> oooh man ! i am slowly, NO, actually pretty
> rapidly, starting to get annoyed with the
> statements of all the teams and drivers about the
> forthcoming race in Monte Carlo. Maldonado says "i
> will win", same goes for ferrari, mclaren and
> mercedes. All of a sudden ferrari say "the
> championship is in our hands" WTF ?? they could
> not even get past a williams last time round and
> hamiltion was over .6 of a second faster than
> them. How about the renault, who were behind just
> because they screwed their strategy as good as
> screwing sth. up gets. Even the white saubers say
> "we will be strong in monaco".
>
> Isn't it just possible that the drivers/ teams go
> out and say: "We have no idea what will happen in
> monaco". Because this is pretty much the situation
> at present.
>
>
> And btw. according not only to schumacher but alos
> to mark webber the new tyres are full sh&%/§.
> Pirelli tried to put it in a way that only
> schumacher does not like the current tyres, but
> actually schuey said it well... 80-90 % of the
> grid does not like those compounds. A pure example
> is the situation in spain, where alonso (with
> tyres about 4 laps fresher than maldonado's got
> close in 2 laps, then fought about 3 laps and did
> not have any tyres left" WTF is that ?!? I know
> you enjoy the show guys but just think for a
> second how boring it will be from driver's point
> of view to nurse the car all the time. i'd
> assume they barely even sweat during the race
> nowadays !!

Who cares? The show's getting really good for once, the drivers are still enjoying themselves and the tyres are adding an extra challenge rather than making them just nurse the tyres. I'm just getting annoyed with Schumacher's griping; he's probably using it as a scapegoat because he's making some fundamental errors (plus, he's only finished 2 races and hence is not best positioned to tell you everything about tyres in race trim.)

If they nursed the tyres all the time, then clearly there'd be no racing going on.

In response to the first point, they program in the changes into the simulator (which correlates from wind tunnel results; it's not always right but usually is) and the drivers feedback how they feel in the car. True, they've got no idea where they're going to be in terms of the other teams, but they've got benchmarks such as last year's setup etc which they can measure up against.

But most of the statements teams put out is just @#$%& for publicity, perhaps being economical with the truth to please sponsors and what-have-you. If a team stepped out and said 'We're gonna be @#$%& this race', the sponsors would most likely take quite a dim view of this.

My two cents

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GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski

Show is good but watching races/quali is not even ½ as satisfying as it used to be. Saving tires, saving fuel, saving engines,.. No one is driving with full speed even in qualifying.

F1 is atm like watching some amateur historic club races where main point is to "have fun" without forgetting to take care of non replaceable museum cars.

Kimi, so, Massa Fernando Sebastian is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?

IWE Wrote:
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> Show is good but watching races/quali is not even
> ½ as satisfying as it used to be. Saving tires,
> saving fuel, saving engines,.. No one is driving
> with full speed even in qualifying.
>
> F1 is atm like watching some amateur historic club
> races where main point is to "have fun" without
> forgetting to take care of non replaceable museum
> cars.

People have been moaning about the qualifying rules for a decade now. The "quality" of the mythical pre-2003 qualifying is vastly overrated. It was only the last 10 minutes or less that had any entertainment value back then. The first 50 minutes was a snore-fest.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

I guess it will probably be a mixed grid, maybe one prominant team will grab the pole ( I really do not see williams any where near there ) I also expect to see the S.C. out at some point, so that will crazy it up even more ... but as has been said time and time again, it's going to be a tyre race ..... so maybe just maybe with 5 different winners this season, we'll probably see yet another winner: my money is on Marussia. I mean, why not?


" Perfection is not a gift ....... it comes with practice."

Member of R.S.C.T Group



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2012 10:08PM by Isaint.

Last year everyone was worried about the tyres going into this race and there were no problems.

Last year the rubbish Williams was doing well and I do think they will be rather high up.

As for the win I recon it will be Alonso or Lewis.

Watching that onboard, ive never seen a Monaco lap where it looked clean or even a brilliant lap. Maybe Trulli's in 2004 comes closest?

I guess it is the nature of the track, car setup and how you need to drive it, but all laps look pretty messy. The other lap I think that looked pretty nice and clean IIRC was Ralf in 2003...

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

I still think Senna pole 1988 is the best lap ever round Monaco, the gap to everyone else was huge and that was with no driver aids and manual gears.

Sorry but Monaco now days is alot easier than in the past.

Yes I know there have been some nasty accidents but the corners are now wider and there are more areas that you can make a mistake and get away with it.

I just don’t know how they maintain this kind of concentration.....
Check this Senna vid qualifying at Monaco 1990 ...Q1 1:21.797
Q2 1:21.314

[youtu.be]


" Perfection is not a gift ....... it comes with practice."

Member of R.S.C.T Group

Alonso's helmet for Monaco.

.

That 1990 lap was certainly a lot of work, but I think today, the lack of... 3rd pedal and shifter has slightly been compensated by much quicker cars and times, smaller braking zones and arguably more room for mistake. Or that was probably worded not so great, not so much more chance of error, but more chance of losing a lot more time than it was back then. If you make a mistake today IMO it costs more than it did in the past purely based on the time it now takes to get around the lap.

Senna made a few oversteer corrections, these days corrections to that degree would cost you a few positions.

Already from watching the cars on track you can tell it will be epically close. Sauber looked clean, Perez especially, Pastor looked good, and Grosjean looked good once he got going. Lewis was up there, and of course Alonso was. Schumacher too looked a bit feisty.

Will be close, hopefully FP2 will show more, the effect of running more fuel here is slightly less than most other circuits so I would hopefully some good comparisons.

HOWEVER, as Vettel showed last year, the track on Sunday (if dry!) is a completely different beast to what we have today. Today we might see the SS tyre lasting 10 laps? But come Sunday if there weather stays as it is, that tyre may well go on to do a 15-20 lap stint? Again it's something that at Monaco is huge. Obviously other tracks rubber in too, but its not quite the same.

edit - forgot to mention two things.

Vettels helmet cam... wtf are the director's doing showing us about 0.5 seconds worth of footage. The shot before he went into tabac really annoyed me. He was coming upto the entrance of possibly one of the toughest corners in F1, I was eager to see it onboard and they switched camera!! I changed to the skf1 onboard channel, but no luck .

Also, J d'ambrosio sounds like an intelligent guy! I thought he was Pirelli's driver, but he's Lotus's test driver? Must say I never took much notice of him last year. Been impressed with Pic though, out qualified Glock a few times so far I believe? Fairly too?

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2012 12:33PM by chet.

nice one, Kimi!

edit: also Vergne is using Alesi´s helmet design







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2012 01:27PM by Frantic.

Jean Alesi... So awesome, he can race the Monaco GP and the Indy 500 in the same weekend. What's the betting he'll turn up for the Coca-Cola 600 too?

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

Alguersauri IS Pirelli's test driver alongside Di Grassi. They are using an old Renault (Lotus F1) chassis.

marcl Wrote:
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> Sorry but Monaco now days is alot easier than in
> the past.


True. Sainte Devote, Nouvelle Chicane, Piscine... all awesome corners which demanded all of the drivers' skill and a bit more. Now you shoot through Piscine in 5th gear, nearly nearly flat out. Just moving a little the steering wheel.



Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps

Frantic Wrote:
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>
>
> nice one, Kimi!
>
> edit: also Vergne is using Alesi´s helmet design
>
>
>

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